One aisle of mayo
One aisle of dry pasta (various types here)
One aisle of coke (and I mean only "coke", not coke like a southern says)
One aisle of cooking oil
One aisle of fernet
At the back of the store where the carneceria is, a massive jumblefuck of people waiting for their number to be called.
Can't shop any of the home goods stuff because the lines from the register reach all the way through them to the food aisles.
When you stand back and look at it, there's little variety of the items. They could save money and fit all this stuff into a small La Anonima type place. I would even argue that some of the Anonimas have more selections than the jumbo. Being in Neuquen we don't get the imported stuff like those in BA do, so when there's espresso or cheese I load up on that. One day there was mexican salsas, bought 10 of those. Cans of blue diamond almonds for 10 bucks a can. Another favorite is when they have pretzels, been burned here a few times with super stale bags.
And for my produce, why do I have to wait in a line for one person in the entire store to weigh it? The first thing I do is look at the produce line to see how long it is and then I decide if I'm buying produce there.
One of my favorite interactions at Coto was during checkout the checker goes to scan a power strip I wanted to buy, of course there is no barcode on this particular one. I tell him the price of the item as I remember it from the shelf, 480 pesos. We look at each other for a second as I'm expecting him to call someone over to go get one with a code on it. He keeps looking at me and finally tells me that it has no code and asks if I still want it. I waited in line for 45 min already so hell yes I want it. So he says it again "there's no code..." motherfucker I grab it from him and swim upstream like a salmon through 30 yards of people and baskets to try and remember the location where I picked this thing up. I get another one and verify it has a code and swim yet again through the lines of people and baskets and give it to him. All the while he sat there on his little chair and looked off into the oblivion. He scanned it and asked "un pago". It might be excusable though because he looked like he may have been learning challenged but here you're never certain.
How do people live like this?
My best experience was at the Carafour (not in anyway relatable to the Carafours of Europe) in town. With a kid named Dennis. This go getter chugged right through 12000 pesos of groceries in about 2 minutes and then didn't hassle me about a 5000 pesos transaction limit like everyone else does. I don't know how he did it but he charged the whole thing on one transaction. I told that dude thank you and that I was really impressed with his attitude and effort.
my argie gf even acknowledges how awesome HEB is.
